1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a cash dispensing system capable of automatically counting and dispensing cash of the amount requested by a customer to be withdrawn and, more particularly, to a system and apparatus for detecting when an error occurs in a cash dispensing process for controlling further dispensing operations.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The recent spread of labor-saving machines is striking and even an unmanned factory is also being planned. Such labor-saving machines have entered into the fields of banks and like establishments and an automatic cash dispenser capable of automatic cash dispensing is now being widely spread.
With such an automatic cash dispenser, a customer can receive a desired amount of money by inserting into the machine a card having recorded thereon his account number (or identification number), a deposited amount of money (or an amount of money to be paid), etc. and by entering an amount of money desired to be withdrawn. Therefore, this automatic cash dispenser saves time and labor for cash dispensing business and enables the banks to offer 24-hour business service and to be unmanned. The prior art of the cash dispensing machine is shown, for example in, the U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,560,715, 3,575,271, 3,641,497 and 3,651,986. In the automatic cash dispensing machine of the above operation, transactions with customers are based on credit, so that it is absolutely necessary to avoid an erroneous operation of the machine, especially an error in counting the amount of money requested by a customer to be withdrawn. To this end, in the automatic cash dispensing machine, a cash counting section takes out bills from a cash container and detects the thickness, length, etc. of each bill and then dispenses the bills one by one. By such detection, abnormality of some extent can be processed on the side of the cash counting section but, in the case of other abnormality, the machine is stopped. Such stoppage of the machine assures that cash erroneously counted is not paid to the customer but repeated stoppage of the machine leads to discredit, which is likely to discredit the bank with customers. Further, for releasing the machine from its stopped condition, an operator or like hand is required and this offsets the advantage of labor saving which is obtainable with this kind of machine. Therefore, in the automatic dispensing machine of this type, it is necessary to avoid stoppage of the machine as much as possible. Where the machine is stopped by some cause, re-actuation of the cash counter leads to the normal cash dispensing operation in many cases. Namely, close contact of bills, erroneous counting of bill or the like is not always caused by a trouble of the machine itself but by the state of bills.